1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a document display apparatus for displaying multi-media documents containing pictures and letters.
2. Description of Related Art
FIG. 23 shows a display screen 30 of a prior art document display apparatus. The prior art document display apparatus can store document data of a plurality of multimedia documents for displaying them. The document data includes related data indicative of whether the documents are in relation to each other. The related data indicates whether the document data needs to be displayed on the display screen at the same time for example. The data of the documents indicated as being related to each other by such related data is displayed respectively in a plurality of document displaying areas 31a through 31c partitioned in the display screen 30 as shown in FIG. 23.
When all the document data cannot be displayed in one document displaying area, moving means such as a scroll bar 32 allows the document data to be scrolled and displayed within the document displaying area. Thereby, all the document data can be displayed in a split form.
Such a displaying method is suitably implemented in handling documents described in HTML language in particular as multi-media documents. In the case of the HTML language it is possible to designate simultaneous display of a plurality of documents by its frame function. When the frame function is executed, the prior art HTML browser splits a display screen into a predetermined number of parts to display a result of layout of the plurality of documents at the same time. This function is adopted in Netscape Navigator of Netscape Communications Corporation and in Internet Explorer of Microsoft Corporation.
However, when the resolution of the display is low or when the display area is small, the boundary of adjacent areas and a scroll bar portion in each individual area occupy a large proportion of the whole document display area. Further, the size of font is limited in terms of readability and the data display capacity is limited in small document display apparatus for portable use. Accordingly, when a plurality of documents are displayed on one single display screen at the same time, a display quantity allocated to each document reduces and the visibility drops as a whole. The drop in visibility of the whole poses a problem especially when it is designated to display the plurality of documents at the same time by the above-mentioned frame function of the HTML language to Indicate a specific meaning by the plurality of documents as a whole.